Prescription Drug Addiction: America's Kids Are The Most Drugged In The World

A new study shows that American children are three times more likely to be prescribed psychotropic medication, like antidepressants, antipsychotics and stimulants, than are children in Europe. The widespread acceptance in the US of drugging teenagers, young kids and even toddlers shows a dreadful lack of concern for long-term effects, which can include prescription drug addiction, permanent injury, psychosis and death.

America’s reliance on pharmaceuticals for kids, which is based on slim or no science, is completely out of control and notoriously far from safe. In fact, most of the psychotropic drugs kids are forced to take have never been tested on children, and no one knows what all the long-term effects might be. Prescription drug addiction may be the least of the problems faced by people after years of powerful, mind-altering drugs.

A team from the USA, Germany and the Netherlands investigated prescription levels in the three countries, quantifying the differences in practice between the US and Western Europe. The study suggests that the America’s attitude toward drugging children is rooted in regulatory practices, which allows more child-drugging here.

But it also suggests that cultural beliefs in America have exalted the role of pharmaceuticals in emotional and behavioral problems. In Europe, drugging children is not seen as the quick and easy cure-all that it is here, and dangerous psychotropic drugs are not shoveled out to kids for every sort of common childhood activity.

The authors claim the main reason is that diagnostic systems in the US are quite different from Western European countries. The trend in the US has been to simply accept all sorts of odd-ball psychiatric diagnoses in kids and adolescents, such as bipolar disorders, which are not accepted European practice. Many psych diagnoses are so off-the-wall that when they’re suggested as the problem, people just start laughing.

But there’s nothing funny about being labeled with a bizarre psych ‘syndrome’ or ‘disorder’ when it comes with a prescription for dangerous psych drugs. For example, in the spring of 2007, a news story on msnbc.com recounted the tragic death of Rebecca Riley, age 4. At age 2½, Rebecca had been “diagnosed” with “bipolar disorder” by a psychiatrist at Tufts Medical Center in Massachusetts. Rebecca got progressively worse on a horrendous combination of psychotropic drugs, and she died at age 4 of a drug overdose.

According to one critic, it’s sometimes hard to tell which psychiatrists, medical schools, universities and hospitals are just blatantly corrupt and evil, and which ones are just grandiose, believing that they are doing valid diagnoses of children’s “psychiatric” problems. And nowhere is there much concern about the thousands of cases of prescription drug addiction that evolve from early drugging of kids.

Finally, the study found that direct-to-consumer drug advertising, which is common in the US, is also likely to account for drug prevalence in the US. Such advertising is banned almost everywhere else in the world.

In many parts of the world, and among many consumer health groups in the US, controversy still surrounds the use of antidepressants like Prozac, stimulants like Ritalin, and antipsychotics like Haldol, in kids. Side effects of these drugs can range from physical illness to psychosis, violence, and suicide. Most of the so-called student “school-shooters” were taking one or more of such medications. Such psychotropic drugs have been identified as stepping stones to drug dependence and life-ruining prescription drug addiction.

As the years roll on, the numbers of American kids that progress to drug dependence and abuse, including outright prescription drug addiction, will mean more people here than anywhere else requiring medical drug detox to safely begin a return to normal life.

There is hope for a new life.Call to speak to one of our experienced & caring detox advisors today!1-866-303-3848